LIAM, and SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE. When she was in Switzerland with Shelley and Byron in 1816 a proposal was made that various members of the party should write a romance or tale dealing with the supernatural. The result of this project was that Mrs. Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Byron the beginning of a narrative about a vampyre, and Dr. Polidori, Byron's physician, a tale named The Vampyre, the authorship of which used frequently in past years to be attributed to Byron himself.
Frankenstein, published in 1818, when Mary Shelley was at the utmost twenty-one years old, is a very remarkable performance for so young and inexperienced a writer; its main idea is that of the formation and vitalization, by a deep student of the secrets of nature, of an adult man, who, entering the world thus under unnatural conditions, becomes the terror of his species, a half involuntary criminal, and finally an outcast whose sole resource is self-immolation. This romance was followed by others: Val perga, or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823), an historical tale written with a good deal of spirit, and readable enough even now; The Last Man (1826), a fiction of the final agonies of human society owing to the universal spread of a pestilence—this is written in a very stilted style, but possesses a particular interest because Adrian is a portrait of Shelley; The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) ; Lodore (1835), also bearing partly upon Shelley's biography, and Falkner (1837). Besides
these novels there was the Journal of a Six Weeks' Tour, which is published in conjunction with Shelley's prose-writings ; and Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840-1842-1843 (which shows an observant spirit, capable of making some true forecasts of the future), and various miscellaneous writings.
After the death of Shelley, Mary in the autumn of 1823 returned to London. At first she had to live by her writings; but after a while Sir Timothy Shelley made her an allowance, which would have been withdrawn if she had persisted in a project of writing a full biography of her husband. In 1838 she edited Shelley's works, supplying the valuable notes. She succeeded, by strenuous exertions, in maintaining her son Percy at Harrow and Cam bridge; in 1840 his grandfather acknowledged his responsibilities and in 1844 he succeeded to the baronetcy. She died on Feb. 21, 1851.
See Richard Church, Mary Shelley (1928) ; and bibliography under